Meaning and Balance

What is a healthy approach for developing both a strong individual character and a responsibility for the collective?

Are we not thinking about the looming social policy, social equity and social justice issues because they are uncomfortable matters? Because they are complex? Because we think someone else will solve the problems that confront our society? Because we have been duped by Hollywood and Wall Street? Are we not thinking about these issues perhaps because they make us feel guilty, and guilty is not a warm place to be?

Why don’t we intentionally ask, who is not at the table in our community meetings, who is not represented on television? Are we blind? Do we lack a consciousness? A conscience?

Have we lost our public places and spaces to do socially reflective practice? Do we have no time for citizenship?

Have you heard anyone recently say “I have a right to my opinion!”
Have you heard anyone recently say “I have a responsibility for my opinion”?

Have we sold out to the consumer worldview that tells us to focus on ourselves as individuals? Do you know anyone who is at peace with herself/himself? Would you score high on a test of intrapersonal intelligence? Do you know yourself? Why are people forming “voluntary simplicity groups?” Do you have someone to love, good work to do, something you are looking forward to?

People don’t empower other people to think, to act – people may give guidance and tools to others to help them empower themselves. Empowerment must come from within an individual – it is not a “knighting” or a “dubbing” process.

Do we have any people in our society who would be willing to give up something they want, if accepting something else would be better for the larger society? Do we have people who care for the larger society? What causes people to widen the circle of their caring from individual/family/neighborhood/community/state/nation/world? Do people think about the consequences of a planet with 6 billion people?

Why are we a country in need of “civility” lessons? Why are so many people rude to Waitresses? Maids? Secretaries? Does this say something about class?

Assumptions – and Making Claims

Are the following claims that can be made or assumptions?

1. The lecture is the best instructional method
2. Grades matter
3. Instructors understand assessment
4. Introductory courses should be taught as introductory courses
5. The University is a microcosm of the real world
6. The stock market is a good indicator of quality of life

Our voice/our language/our culture – a need for sensitive, savvy translators, bridge-builders [Difficult Conversations, The Way We Talk]

Do you have soak time/down time/meditation/walk time/talk time/pause/space – to do reflective practice?

The First Step


The young poet Eumenes complained one day to Theocritus: "I have been waiting for two years now and I have done only one idyll.
It is my only finished work.
Alas, it is steep, I see it,
the stairway of Poetry is so steep; and from the first step where I now stand, poor me, I shall never ascend."
"These words," Theocritus said, are unbecoming and blasphemous. And if you are on the first step, you ought to be proud and pleased. Coming as far as this is not little; what you have achieved is great glory. For even this first step is far distant from the common herd. To set your foot upon this step you must rightfully be a citizen of the city of ideas.
And in that city it is hard and rare to be naturalized. In her market you find Lawmakers whom no adventurer can dupe. Coming as far as this is not little;
what you have achieved is great glory.

C. P. Cavafy

Veargangenheitsbewältigung

Veargangenheitsbewältigung
Trans: coming to terms with or overcoming the past
Margaret E. Holt
June, 2001

Formal study in adult education includes time spent on defining the concept “adult”. When asked, “Who is an adult?” students offer a range of ideas that include psychological, sociological, biological, cultural, historical, legal, and reputational/positional considerations. Initially there will be a few who will challenge the importance of asking this question. I would argue that it is a most worthy inquiry, since examining the meaning of mature status can initiate a positive self-reflection and critique. The writer Alice Walker noted that in the Cherokee community a woman becomes officially an elder when she reaches age 52. Further, Walker, explained that at this time, women not only have a “right” to speak out within their community, but they bear a responsibility to do so.

I would like to see a shift in our society away from people wallowing in a dissatisfying past to assuming a responsibility for the future. Adult status then might be viewed as coming to terms with or overcoming the weaker less-constructive dimensions of one’s past. Instead of operating from a “naming and blaming” worldview, the mature adult might move into a “naming and framing” worldview. Certainly most adults want to review and understand their past, how it shapes their present, and directs their future. Yet, so much emphasis on individual rights and other-blaming based on past experiences lodges people in a “stuck” mode.

Or course, this conceptualization of adulthood could be assigned to the purview of therapists, and those privileged to pursue professional consultation might find treatments to help them overcome and adjust in a more intellectual or healthy manner. Yet, this approach would again privilege the small number of the more affluent and educated adults in this society. Perhaps adult educators could help advance self-reflection and activity that moves and inspires adults to realize and emphasize the Janus facing the future and loosen the crick in the neck that holds their attention to the Janus facing those days of yore. [Note: even our President, George W. Bush, informed the press, “On this we can agree. The past is over!”] Of course, the challenge is learning how to pull the best of the past into the present and move beyond the past that is dysfunctional.

Further, adult educators have to weigh in on the meaning of how and if we apply what we have learned from the past to the future. Personally, I sense too many so-called adults live unexamined lives. I’m saddened by evidence of a lack of curiosity, succumbing to consumptive habits of daily life that are void of stimulation and renewal. What has been will be. This stance is dangerous for individuals and society. Have we given up on our pursuit of happiness? The essayist Addison said we needed attention to three dimensions of our lives to achieve happiness: 1) Someone to love, 2) Good work to do, and 3) Something to look forward to. I’d pose that those who cannot express much depth in what they are looking forward to are probably caught in their pasts, like a needle on a damaged record where the same words endlessly repeat and the rest of the song is never heard.

So I’d like to recommend that adult educators jiggle some needles.